Fintiri says 29 killed in Adamawa football pitch attack

Gunmen have killed at least 29 people in northeast Nigeria, a state governor said Monday, with locals saying the attackers targeted young people gathered at a football pitch, the latest bout of deadly unrest in Africa’s most populous nation.

The attack on Sunday occurred in Adamawa state, which border Cameroon, and is a hotspot for violence by jihadists and local criminal gangs. Communal violence over conflict for land is also rife in the state.

The latest attack comes as Nigeria’s security crisis is increasingly under scrutiny — both abroad and at home as general elections are less than a year away.

Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri visited the scene of the Sunday attack and “confirmed that no fewer than 29 people were killed in a deadly attack on Guyaku community in Gombi Local Government Area,” his spokesman said in a post on social media.

Locals also gave a similar toll.

Resident Philip Agabus told AFP that the attack occurred when “our people converged at a football pitch in Guyaku community,… were attacked by insurgents who entered with guns and began shooting randomly”.

The dead were “youths, including some ladies that were watching football,” another local, Joshua Usman, told AFP.

“They also burnt places of worship, houses and motorcycles,” added Usman.

The state governor’s office wrote that “the attackers operated for several hours, killing dozens of residents, burning places of worship, and destroying property including motorcycles”, citing a local community leader, Aggrey Ali.

Local television showed footage of a burned church and several charred motor cycles.

The governor blamed the Boko Haram militants who are active in the northeast of Nigeria.

But a rival group, the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP) claimed responsibility for the attack saying it “killed at least 25… Christians”, and “torched a church and nearly 100 motorcycles”, in a statement reported by the SITE monitoring group.

Fintiri condemned the attack, saying “it will not go unpunished” while he vowed “intensifying security operations immediately to restore peace”.

Since 2009, the jihadist insurgency in Nigeria, led primarily by Boko Haram and its rival faction, the ISWAP, has left tens of thousands of people dead and millions displaced in the northeast of the country, according to the United Nations.

The jihadist conflict has spread to neighbouring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

Nigeria is now looking to the United States for technical and training support for its troops fighting the jihadists after a resurgence of violence strained relationships between the two countries.

A separate attack occurred Sunday in a another district more 100 kilometres away which a local community blamed on communal clashes over farmland disputes in several villages in Lamurde area.

“Lives were lost, properties were also lost,” Bulus Daniel, local government council chairman for Lamurde area told AFP.

AFP

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